


Baby You're a Bomb

by billtheradish



Category: Titanium (Music Video)
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Gen, On the Run, discussions about death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-20
Updated: 2013-10-20
Packaged: 2017-12-29 21:55:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,173
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1010564
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/billtheradish/pseuds/billtheradish
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Someone was going to get hurt.</p><p>Dirty linoleum under his knees. Loose paper from where he'd dropped his bag. He was shaking, and he couldn't get away, and someone was going to get hurt.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Baby You're a Bomb

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Kabal42](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kabal42/gifts).



> Thank you, [Kabal42](http://archiveofourown.org/users/Kabal42/), for requesting _exactly the story I wanted to write_ for this vid. You wouldn't believe how excited I was to read your letter. =D I hope you like it.
> 
> For anyone else who might not be familiar with the video, you can find it [here](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JRfuAukYTKg).

"Remember this feeling," his mother (not mother. aunt? she'd said aunt, but she'd _raised_ him, she--) said, hand firm but gentle on the back of his neck.

Water was dripping. Somewhere. The ground was covered in broken dishes, all of their dishes, and only a few inches away from his nose.

"That sick feeling in your gut, like you aren't sure if you're gonna cough or throw up?" Everything on the floor started moving. Pushing away, pulling together. Making piles.

Cleaning up after him.

"Remember that feeling," she repeated, her hand slipping away as she went to get a dust pan. "It means you're probably gonna hurt someone, if you aren't alone."

\-----

He was seven. He'd thrown the fridge across the room. Halfway through a wall.

The water dripping was because he'd crushed the sink.

His dad came home (actually his dad. that was a relief) and they talked.

They left. 

\-----

His aunt taught him how to use what he had. To not blow up, or break things, or throw things when he didn't mean to. (Someday, she said, he'd be able to pick things up or push them away. To make himself lighter so he could run faster. Jump higher.)

His dad taught him things that, it turned out, his dad shouldn't even need to know. 

"Don't run," was the lesson, when he flinched at a police siren outside. His father kept browsing the CDs as though nothing was out of the ordinary. "If you need to get away, don't act guilty. Act as normal as you can. Don't look at people any more or any less than normal. Find a way to get away fast that doesn't look like you're rushing."

One of the CDs vanished between his dad's fingertips.

"If you're trying to get away with something, don't run. Evade."

(His dad hadn't actually taken the CD, but he did take things. Steal things. Candy bars, post cards, packs of gum. It didn't stop until he learned not to hunch his shoulders and look away, when they walked past the register.)

\-----

He turned eight and he lived in a new state. Went to a new school, had new friends and a new name.

His aunt let him pick which one. She had a lot.

\-----

"What happened to my mom?"

His aunt (Gertrude, since they moved. Gerdie to the guys at work) paused, foot braced on a log and scanning the woods.

(He'd told his friends they were going hiking. They'd asked about coming along. Wanted to know what trail they were doing.)

"She died," his aunt said, finally. "She died to keep a lot of other people from dying, and because even we have limits. Now, where's the nearest water?"

He didn't need to think, pointed east toward the stream they'd been avoiding.

"Good," she smiled. "Where's your dad?"

The emergency-only meeting point. North, two hours. He pointed.

"Good. Take me there."

(He still wasn't sure how to explain that 'hiking' took all weekend, and the less they saw of trails the better.)

\-----

He was ten and they'd just moved again when his aunt (Jasmine now, but she was going to go by Jazz) explained about the hospital. About his mom, the physical therapist who'd wanted to settle down. Set roots.

About the explosion everyone said was a bomb, but was probably a person. Someone like them. ("And that is why you _don't go where there's people_ when you feel like that, understand? You aren't _sick_ you're a _bomb_.") 

She told him about his mother, and how they'd found her in the basement, near where the 'bomb' had gone off. How nobody could explain it took so long for that section to collapse, with the way the 'explosion' had affected the structure. How it was a miracle they'd been able to get almost everybody out, before it fell. (Before his mom couldn't hold it up anymore.)

How the police figured she'd been the one to set the bomb.

She told him his real name, and why he didn't get to use it anymore.

\-----

"Why was she even there?"

"Aside from her job?" his dad asked, sounding more amused than the question really called for.

The amusement didn't last.

"People like you, your mom, her sister...you can feel it, when someone else is going to--go off, I suppose," his dad said, voice soft and calm and even. "It's how your aunt knew to be there, when you blew up the kitchen."

"So why didn't she get _away_?"

"Because she was a better person than we are," his dad said, taping across the seam of the box so they'd know it hadn't been finished yet. "And I need to go, now."

His dad set the tape aside and vanished.

\-----

His dad didn't let either of them see him for two days. They knew he was around, because boxes kept getting packed in rooms they weren't in, but he didn't let them see him.

After that, he only talked about his mom with his aunt.

\-----

Someone was going to get hurt.

Dirty linoleum under his knees. Loose paper from where he'd dropped his bag. He was shaking, and he couldn't get away, and someone was going to get hurt.

There were voices. There were _people_. They sounded worried but all he could hear was the newscast still playing on the discarded phone. A shrill voice talking about a fire at the youth center on Davison. About the woman who'd ripped a wall down to get more people out. How it had seemed like they were flying.

It didn't take long before they got a name. Bethany Carlisle.

("I like Carlisle, for an alias," his aunt had grinned, flipping her new card through her fingers. "It tells you it has a lie in it.")

"Shit, isn't that..." somebody whispered, too loud to be secret

(They'd stayed too long. Nearly three years. They'd liked the town. The jobs, the school, the people.)

"Shut up," another voice hissed, and a third came closer "Dude, are you okay?"

He liked the people, here.

"Get away." He didn't recognize his own voice. "There's a bomb."

The clench in his stomach felt like a countdown.

\-----

Someone must have taken him seriously. He'd heard running before he lost it. Heard the fire alarm.

There were no bodies, when he recovered enough to check.

\-----

 _"Don't run,"_ his dad whispered from his memory when he saw the cop car. _"Evade."_

He kept his head down. Walked out like nothing was wrong. (At least. He tried.)

Stole a bike, so he could go fast without drawing attention.

He didn't really know why he went home. He knew better, when he was thinking straight.

Emergency-only meeting point. Two hours north, across the highway, another half hour then follow the river for an hour. Four hours west, after that.

\-----

Someone was going to get hurt.

Dead leaves under his knees, shouting voices, bright light.

 _"If someone's aiming a gun at you,"_ his aunt had told him, _"then it's self defense."_

He let go.

**Author's Note:**

> Huge thanks to my usual beta reader, who knows who she is and will remind me if she wants more specific credit post-reveal. 
> 
> As a note in regards to the line about it being self defense if someone's aiming a gun at you, I think it's important to note that this was specific for their situation. While self defense can supposedly be used as a mitigating factor in the case of assault or a death, I don't know the ins and outs of that. (I would also assume that it gets a _lot_ more complicated when the police and/or military are involved, as in the video.) That line isn't meant to be anything other than identifying one of the very, _very_ few circumstances that family considers it acceptable to injure people with their abilities. Please don't think I'm implying anything more than that.
> 
> Have a happy Yuletide!


End file.
